Momentum in the Woods: A Parenting Lesson About Balance and Moving Forward
A walk in the woods with my daughter turned into a lesson about momentum, balance, and why moving forward is almost always easier than standing still.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Put Down the Phone
Watching the NYE ball drop in Times Square, I had the same thought I have every year.
They panned to the crowd and every single person was filming it.
Not watching it.
Not being in it.
Filming it.
Which made me wonder: how many of those videos will ever be watched again?
Be honest. Almost none.
I have this same conversation every summer during fireworks shows. My wife pulls out her phone and starts recording, and I gently remind her that she is never going to watch that video. She knows it. I know it. And yet out comes the phone anyway.
That is the part that fascinates me.
Because this impulse is not about memory.
It is about reassurance.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating moments like they are not fully real unless they are documented. As if joy needs a receipt. As if being present is not enough unless there is proof we can show later, even though later almost never comes.
Fireworks are the perfect example. In real life, they take over your entire field of vision. You feel them in your chest. The timing surprises you. The scale humbles you.
On a phone, they are just tiny dots of light with bad sound.
A worse version of what you are already experiencing.
And yet, we keep recording.
I do not think it is because we are shallow or distracted. I think it is because the world moves fast, attention is fragmented, and phones promise permanence in a life that feels increasingly fleeting. Filming feels like grabbing onto something before it slips away.
But there is a cost.
When you watch life through a screen, even one you are holding, you split your attention. And presence does not split well. You are either in the moment, or you are curating it.
What gets lost is not trivial. Eye contact. Sensory detail. Emotional texture. The shared silence of a crowd feeling the same thing at the same time.
We trade all of that for a video we will not open.
I am not immune to this. None of us are. But I do think choosing to put the phone down now counts as a small act of resistance. A quiet decision to trust that being there is enough.
The best moments do not ask to be recorded.
They ask to be felt.
Maybe that is the real resolution worth keeping. Less proof. More presence.
“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”
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